Ablation Threshold and Temperature Dependent Thermal Conductivity of High Entropy Carbide Thin Films

High entropy carbides (HECs) are a promising new class of ultra-high temperature ceramics that could provide novel material solutions for leading edges of hypersonic vehicles, which can reach temperatures > 3,500 °C and experience extreme thermal gradients. Although the mechanical and thermal properties of HECs have been studied extensively at room temperature, few works have examined HEC properties at high temperatures or considered these materials’ responses to thermal shock. In this work, we measure the thermal conductivity of a variety of five-cation HECs up to 1200 °C. We find that thermal conductivity increases with temperature, consistent with trends demonstrated in single-metal carbides. We also measure thermal conductivity of an HEC deposited with varying CH₄ flow rate, and find that although thermal conductivity is reduced when carbon content surpasses stoichiometric concentrations, the films all exhibited the same temperature dependent trends regardless of carbon content. To compare the thermal shock resistance of HECs with a refractory carbide, we conduct pulsed laser ablation measurements to determine the fluence threshold the HECs can withstand before damaging. We find that this metric for the average bond strength trends with the theoretical hardness of the HECs as expected.